


Rhythm of Love

by RoseByAnyOtherName17



Series: The Lion, the Wolf and the Dragon [21]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Meetings, Fluff, Introspection, Love, Romance, Strategy & Tactics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 17:38:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15369816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseByAnyOtherName17/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName17
Summary: "That's a Baratheon man if I've ever seen one," Lady Olenna said loudly. "What's your name?"





	Rhythm of Love

**Author's Note:**

> Next installment! Please don't hate me for certain characters' deaths, sometimes these things just have to happen
> 
> title comes from the song by the Plain White T's

Lady Olenna wanted to meet with her straightaway, but when Arya wouldn’t allow anyone else to clean and bandage Gendry’s wound, she came down to the great hall herself. The remaining Lannisters had been moved to the cells below to await their fate. Arya was so focused on Gendry that she didn’t notice the Queen of Thorns until Nymeria let out a halfhearted growl beside them, where she lay patiently waiting for Arya to see to her. Arya’s gaze snapped up in time for Lady Olenna to say, “That’s a Baratheon man if I’ve ever seen one,” loudly and unapologetically.

 

“My Lady, I’m so sorry,” Arya said at once, standing and reaching out to take the lady’s hand. “If you’d rather us continue this in your chambers, I will join you shortly, I just have to tend to my…”

 

“No need, I’m already here.” Lady Olenna sat heavily in a chair that one of her guards rushed to grab for her. “Carry on, take care of your young man. We can speak here just as well.”

 

Arya smiled a little anxiously, crouching back next to Gendry and continuing her careful inspection of his wound. Once the blood and dirt had been rinsed away, it became a long, thin cut that didn’t even need stitches. Even so, Arya bandaged it tightly and touched Gendry’s forehead with the back of her hand. “I’m not sick,” he griped. “It’s just a cut, you’re worrying over nothing.”

 

“You are not nothing,” Arya reminded him. _You’re everything,_ she didn’t remind him.

 

“Stannis was always far too stiff to consider laying with a woman other than his wife, even when she couldn’t give him a son,” Olenna said, “and Renly far too in love with men, particularly my grandson, to bear a child. You’re Robert’s bastard. What’s your name?”

 

“Gendry,” he answered, completely bewildered and looking at Arya for help.

 

“We don’t know for certain if he’s Robert’s son, My Lady,” Arya tried.

 

“Oh, he is,” Lady Olenna said. “There’s no doubt about that. You should know, Arya Stark, you knew the man well enough. Well, you knew him as a fat drunkard who could hardly stand straight. But if you’d known him as a young man, you wouldn’t have any doubt about your bastard’s identity. Tell me, how did you come to meet?”

 

“Forgive me, My Lady, but that’s a long story for a later time,” Arya said firmly. “There are more important things to discuss now.”

 

“Yes indeed.” The Queen of Thorns waved a servant over. “I suppose you’re hungry? Normally I would hold a feast, but my son has advised against it, considering your house’s words are finally coming true again. ‘We must conserve our resources,’ he tells me.” She scoffed. “As if I need telling. I’ve seen many winters, the last I suspect before you were born.”

 

“It was a fairly short one, wasn’t it?” Arya accepted the loaf of bread and block of cheese from the servant, but declined the wine he offered. “I was born somewhere near the end of it.” She broke the bread in half and handed it to Gendry, glaring at him when he tried to say he wasn’t hungry. He huffed an irritated breath and took an exaggerated bite, then smacked Arya’s hand away when she ruffled his hair playfully. Her fear was fading now, but she would be sharing a room with him again tonight, no matter whose castle they were guests in. She watched him eat for a moment before abandoning her own food for a moment in order to set Nymeria’s leg and bind it.

 

“My house owes you a great debt now,” Lady Olenna said. “We could never have defeated the Lannisters ourselves.”

 

“If you keep your promise to Daenerys Targaryen, then your debt is paid,” Arya told her. “But there is something else you may be able to help me with, when this war is over. With any luck, the next won’t begin until it is, but the Night King probably doesn’t care much for politics.”

 

Lady Olenna scoffed. “The Night King is a fairytale, nothing more.”

 

“Maybe he used to be,” Arya answered, “but I’m sure you know that I took Riverrun with a Wildling army, and my brother defeated the Boltons with them as well. Tell me, My Lady, why would the Night’s Watch let the Wildlings over the Wall if there was no threat? I mean no disrespect, but the army of the dead is very real, and it’s on its way. Jon has already fought them; the rest of Westeros will be as well, in time.”

 

Before Lady Olenna could respond, a stout, balding man wandered over. “Mother, you should be resting.”

 

“I’ve rested long enough,” Lady Olenna said dismissively. “Better to speak with the woman who saved our house today.” She looked at Arya again. “Forgive my son, he has always lacked certain courtesies.”

 

So _this_ was Mace Tyrell. Arya thought to herself that, considering the tales of his son and daughter’s otherworldly beauty, he might look more than just…ordinary. “Pleased to meet you, My Lord,” she said, standing long enough to place her hand in his and let him brush his lips across it.

 

“Lady Stark,” he said, flustered. “My apologies, I did not realize…”

 

Arya shook her head, smiling. “Never mind,” she assured him. “I imagine you haven’t seen many ladies in armor before.”

 

“Or tending to their wounded themselves,” Mace Tyrell added. He scratched his head a little awkwardly. “We owe you a debt now, My Lady.”

 

Lady Olenna spoke up again. “She was just telling me that we can repay that debt by fighting with the North when the Night King arrives in Westeros.” She sounded dismissive, but Arya knew by the spark in her eyes that she had her attention. Satisfied for the moment, she sat next to Nymeria again and finished binding her leg. It was a clean break, luckily; it shouldn’t take more than a few weeks to heal, providing that Arya could convince Nymeria to rest for that time.

 

Mace Tyrell shook his head. “If you would like, we can have dinner in my solar and we can talk more about this, and about your dragon queen,” he offered. 

 

“Thank you,” Arya said, “but I need to take care of my men first. Perhaps breakfast tomorrow morning? If it please you, My Lord.”

 

“That will be just fine,” the Queen of Thorns said when Mace Tyrell looked utterly lost. She got to her feet, leaning on her son’s arm. “One of the girls will show you to your room when you are ready. One will be made up for your Baratheon bastard next door as well.”

 

“There’s no need for that,” Arya told her firmly. “I’ll need to keep an eye on him tonight, make sure no infection sets in.”

 

Lord Tyrell made to protest, but his mother waved her hand in his face and said, “As you please. Goodnight, little one.”

 

Arya bowed her head politely, waited for them to leave before turning back to Gendry. “Finish that,” she scolded him, gesturing at the bread and cheese still left in his hand. “I can’t have you hungry in addition to getting yourself stabbed.”

 

“It’s a cut,” Gendry retorted, but took another pointed mouthful anyways. “And I could say the same to you. You haven’t touched yours.”

 

“I’ll eat when everyone else has eaten.”

 

“You’ll eat now,” Gendry insisted, shoving the cheese back toward her, “or I’ll kick up a fuss and the Stormlords will have an excuse to treat you like the lady they think you are.”

 

Arya smirked. “You think they’ll listen to you?”

 

He shrugged. “You heard Lady Tyrell. I’m Robert Baratheon’s son. It’s probably the only reason why they tolerate you crawling into my tent every night.”

 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Arya told him. “They don’t say anything because they’re terrified of me.”

 

Gendry chuckled. “That’s true.”

 

When they had eaten enough to satisfy each other, Arya helped him to his feet – well, uninjured foot – and helped him to their designated room. There was lukewarm water waiting in the attached washroom tub, but Gendry shooed her away once she had helped him strip down to his smallclothes. “I can bathe myself, Milady.” He kept his gaze averted, a blush rising on his neck, as if that would stop Arya from seeing his body. His playful demeanor vanished completely as she looked him over for any wounds she might have missed. “You should go speak with the Stormlords. They’ll be wanting to see you.”

 

“Will you just let me take care of you?” Arya asked gently. The knot in her stomach was easing with every passing minute, but she knew that she wouldn’t be satisfied until Gendry was clean and in bed and asleep. “The lords can wait.”

 

Blue eyes met grey, and at last Gendry nodded. He made her look away while he struggled out of his smallclothes, but he let Arya help him into the tub, careful to keep his bandaged leg propped up out of the water. She couldn’t quite stop herself from watching him sink into the tub with a relieved sigh, as if even just-barely warm water was welcome to his sore muscles. The water didn’t quite rise up to his chest, and if she wanted to she knew she could see the rest of his body, but she kept her eyes up. He seemed remarkably shy about the whole thing, and that in itself made her wonder why she herself wasn’t uncomfortable. She had been around men her entire life, and in Braavos naked men were not uncommon, even in the streets. She had never spared any of them a glance, until Gendry. She touched him without hesitating, tipping his head back so she could sluice water over his hair. There was an easy intimacy in it, in tangling her fingers in his damp hair and massaging flowery smelling soap into it while he scrubbed at his body under the water. When she lifted his chin again and cupped a hand over his eyes to avoid getting water in them as she rinsed his hair, he raised a hand to hold her wrist.

 

“I love you,” he whispered into the space between them. She lifted her hand from his eyes and saw the truth of the words in them. She kissed him again, gently this time without the adrenaline of battle, and whispered them back to him.

 

**

 

Mace Tyrell looked utterly lost. “It’s all true then? The Long Night is coming?”

 

“If we can’t stop it, then yes,” Arya said calmly. “The Night King is stronger than ever and the Wall weaker than it’s been in centuries, structurally and in defense. Men from the Vale have agreed to fill some of the abandoned castles, but it’s only a matter of time before the Wall is threatened by the entirety of the army of the dead. If Daenerys can take the Iron Throne before, then we stand a chance at uniting Westeros and defeating it. But as long as Cersei is queen, the country is divided. We can’t afford to stand against each other now, if we want to survive the winter.”

 

“You took back the Riverlands,” Lady Olenna said from her chair in the corner. “The Dornish and Ironborn stand for the dragon queen. The Stormlords follow you. What is to stop our armies from storming King’s Landing?”

 

“Euron Greyjoy is keeping half of the Dornish army busy attacking their coast,” Arya told her, and the room at large. “Most of their fleet is holding Casterly Rock on the seaside, and the Dothraki guard it from land.”

 

Mace spoke at the same time as his mother: “Dothraki?”

 

“That is still over half of the country left to fight.”

 

Arya addressed Lord Tyrell first. “Yes, the Dothraki. Daenerys brought them across the Narrow Sea with her. Unsullied as well.” She turned to Lady Olenna. “I suspect it will come to that soon, storming King’s Landing. We certainly have the men, but Daenerys wants to avoid unnecessary death. The commoners of King’s Landing have done nothing wrong, and after the Sept of Baelor…we fear that more wildfire could be planted under the rest of the city. One word, and Cersei could destroy it all.”

 

“The woman may be mad, but she is not so far gone yet,” Olenna protested. “She would not risk herself in that way.”

 

“Of course, she would likely be far away by then,” Arya agreed. “But when she gets wind of our approach, that’s what she’ll do: flee the city, and leave behind loyal men to burn the city.”

 

“Even though her brother remains missing and her daughter held by her enemies?”

 

Arya hesitated. “It is my belief that Cersei no longer cares for her family, or not enough to relinquish her power for them. When the Dornish joined Daenerys, it would have been expected of her to reach out to Arianne Martell to discuss getting Myrcella back, but she never did. No word has come from Cersei at all, except in the form of besieging your home and allying herself with Euron Greyjoy.”  


“But this attack on the Dornish coast,” Mace Tyrell spoke up. “Could it not be an effort to get her daughter back?”

 

“They bypassed Sunspear entirely; all of their attacks have been focused on the southernmost coastline. Lemonwood, Salt Shore, the surrounding towns and villages. They never even came close to Sunspear, and that’s where Myrcella is being kept.”

 

It was troublesome, having to wait, and once again that was all that was left to do until Daenerys sent word. For once, Arya wasn’t too bothered by it; Gendry limped when he walked, and no matter what he said, she knew he was hurting. Nymeria, too, seemed content to rest with him and allow herself to heal. It gave them time to get better, and Arya time to kill some more Lannister men.

 

They looked at her the same way the Lannisters at Riverrun had; with awe, and quiet determination when she asked them to denounce Cersei as queen. She had been disappointed to discover that Bronn died in battle. The back of his head was caved in from a heavy blow, but his face was unmistakable in death. She’d wanted to wipe the smug certainty of his damn castle off his face herself, but settled for burning his body, and the other Lannisters with him. _No sense in leaving corpses for the Night King to reanimate if he gets this far,_ she thought. It made her feel cold, and she didn’t share the sentiment out loud with anyone else.

 

She sparred with the Tyrell men now, learning their fighting style the way she had learned the Wildlings’ and the Stormlords’ and the Ironborn’s. She supposed she should stop being surprised when they moved differently than anyone else she had met, because they all did that. No one army in Westeros fought the same way, because they all trained and learned under a different swordsman, in a different place. The Wildlings were brute force, the way they’d learned to survive beyond the Wall; the Stormlords and their men swung hard but didn’t quite engage until they were approaching the kill; the Ironborn were light on their feet, balanced, but ruthless; the Tyrells fought more like Arya, with light, quick movement tempered by caution. One man in particular, Ronnie, caught on to her waterdancing quicker than anyone she had met thus far. She practiced with him more than the other men, finding it a welcome challenge until Gendry was back on his feet.

 

“He likes you,” he pointed out to her one night while they ate together. At her raised eyebrow, he tilted his head toward Ronnie, across the yard with younger boys no older than twelve. They’d come in from a nearby village to see the “legendary Arya Stark” and stayed to learn to fight. Arya hoped they would never see battle.

 

“You say that as if it matters,” Arya said. She didn’t deny it, because, besides knowing it was useless to argue with Gendry about something so insignificant, she was beginning to recognize that she wasn’t the ugly little girl she had been once. She knew now that she was attractive, in a way. Not like Sansa, and she never would be, but it didn’t startle her when men looked at her anymore. It just didn’t particularly matter to her either.

 

Gendry tilted his head as if to say it did. Arya nudged him pointedly. “Don’t be that way,” she told him, and stole a piece of the cheesy bread the cook made the two of them special. _“A gift, for you to know what true southern food is like before winter comes,”_ he had said. Never mind that Arya had lived in King’s Landing for quite awhile as a girl.

 

“What way?”

 

“Jealous.” She tapped his nose with the tip of a finger. “It doesn’t suit you.”

 

Gendry rolled his eyes. “I’m just observing,” he said loftily, struggling to sit up for a moment and wincing. Arya wrapped an arm around his waist to help, and when he was settled again he continued, “I bet he’d like to make you his lady when all this is over.”

 

“I won’t be anyone’s lady.”

 

“Not even mine?” His eyes glinted playfully in the fading sunlight.

 

Arya pretended to give it some thought. “Ask me again when we’ve defeated Cersei and the Night King,” she responded airily, the best impression of Sansa she could manage. Gendry grinned, and she smiled back. She thought perhaps things might have changed after kissing him and finally saying the words out loud, but instead there was just an added level of intimacy. They moved the same, if touching a little more openly now. Arya hadn’t had a problem touching him before, but up until Olenna Tyrell called him Robert Baratheon’s bastard in front of everyone, he hesitated to do anything other than stand closer to her than what might be proper. He saved his affection for when they were alone.

 

She liked the feeling of ease and wondered if this was how Jon Snow had loved his Ygritte. Freely and without reserve. Or if people looked at them and saw her mother and father. But no, they hadn’t ever sat together in the open and shared space like this, not in front of others. She couldn’t ever recall seeing her father kissing her mother on the cheek, the way Gendry stretched up to do so now before resting his head on her shoulder. But then, she hadn’t been looking for that back then, the way Sansa always had, seeing romance in every corner of Winterfell. Arya hadn’t wanted it. She hadn’t even wanted it when she first met Gendry, or when she lost him. She didn’t think she would have _ever_ wanted it if he hadn’t come back to her.

 

Just Gendry then. That was okay.

 

But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t fight tooth, nail and Needle to keep him now.


End file.
